Long talk from Writin_Reg :)
But the main point is that Sims games are different from other games:
1. Other games are usually only played for some time by gamers who then just move on to the next game. They therefore don’t have or need many packs to expand them and such packs don’t usually sell very well.
2. Simmers don’t only want a basegame. They want a huge collection of packs too. But if there was a competitor the simmers would usually only buy one of the games. Therefore a small competing game wouldn’t work. Only a game with as many and even better packs would sell enough to pay for the development of the game. But the losing game in a competition with EA would cost so much that the whole game company would most likely be in huge economical trouble.
Other game companies want to take less risks and therefore don’t even try to make a similar game unless it is a small game with a different idea. But the experience show that small similar games usually aren’t very profitable.
So no. It is still very unlikely that a similar game will be attempted by any other game company. Not because they couldn’t make it. But because it would be way too risky and nobody knows exactly how to make such a game in a way that would make the game even more popular than EA big Sims games still are.
